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It is with some reluctance that honesty compels me to contradict a
part of Michael Bradshaw's defense of myself in the most recent
(2/19/12) Libertarian Enterprise.

Although I don't much like admitting it, putting a multiplier, such
as 3 or 7, onto financial restitution, in order to pay for emotional
damages is probably not that good an idea, and will lead to a lot of
abuse of the legal system.

There are a couple reasons for this. The first is that since one's
emotions are pretty much unprovable, anyone can, and will, claim
'emotional' problems for a crime. And a lot of people most likely
will, if it means a bigger restitution. How do you judge someone's
emotions? Some people may be more attached to their pet duck than
others. Some people might have a duck in their yard that they were
raising to eat themselves, but if their neighbor comes and kills it,
if they stand to gain more restitution by claiming it was a pet, will
do so.

Secondly, emotions can, and do, vary wildly from one human being to
another. I suspect that this is actually going to cause a very large
problem in how a Libertarian society deals with rape, the damage of
which is generally primarily emotional. You can't really claim that
rape is an exception, because it is emotionally damaging to 100% of
all people. There are some people such as myself, for whom rape by
violence would actually be far less emotionally distressing than rape
by fraud, or being lied to for sex.

I've been told, and very reluctantly agree with, the fact that the
only restitution I would really be entitled to in compensation for
being lied to for sex, would be financial. However, I really don't
think the going rate for a prostitute covers my crying myself to
sleep 3 nights a week for the next several years.

In addition, I also don't think that the emotions of the majority of
women (who as I understand it would be more upset by violent rape)
are somehow intrinsically more valuable than my own, such as that
they are entitled to more compensation than I am, for the same sort
of emotional problem. Placing the rights and emotions of some people,
be they a majority or minority, above those of other people, is one
major way that we got into the current bureaucratic mess we are in,
in the first place.

This being the case, I think publicizing the truth is an excellent
solution, one which would let the punishment fit the crime. Being
widely known as either a violent rapist, or the sort of man who lies
for sex is probably going to cause a severe reduction to a man's sex
life.

I might also mention that this is the specific reason for which (I
believe) some people do not like the idea of publicizing the actions
of others, as a response to them. I can only think that either a lot
of men are accustomed to frequently lying for sex, or that they think
their friends and relatives are, and do not want to stop this
practice, or for there to be any negative consequences for it.

In my own opinion, I don't think that allowing people to lie with
impunity, or with only minor consequences, is compatible with a
libertarian society. And this is true whether the lies are for the
purposes of political gain, or for sexual or financial gain, or for
any other reason.

The Cherokee are not even other. There has been a high degree of
intermarriage between the Cherokee and the English, Scots, and
Irish settlers in their territory that most of the Cherokee I
know are apparently white. Most of us would not think of Winston
Churchill as being Cherokee but he was. Just bringing this up to
support your point that the concept of others is often a lie used
to enslave us.

Recently the Catholic Church and the US Bureaucracy got into it over
whether or not the Church should pay for contraceptives for its
employees. Of course the US Government cannot let this stand. Why if
people could refuse to pay for the government using their money for
purposes they consider immoral people might refuse to pay the portion
of their taxes used to pay for wars, or gun control, or the so called
war on drugs, or stupid fences on the Border.

This idea is not new. Joan Baez and others refused to pay taxes in
the Sixties to protest the war in Vietnam. In the seventies Analog
published a short story about people being able to tell the government
how to spend the taxes they did pay (I guess if you can't get out of
paying...).

Bill Maher even approached this point from the opposite point of view.
He admits that he pays taxes and surrenders to the state the power to
decide how the money is spent. He also subscribes to the theory that
the War of Yankee Aggression was about ending slavery (It wasn't. It
was a coup d'etat by Yankee industrialists against the Southern
Planter Class. Slavery and customs duties were just pretexts. I got a
feeling a lot of my friends and I are going to have to agree to
disagree on this point.) Why this would matter to a slave so comfortable
in his chains I haven't the faintest clue. (disclaimer. I recently
settled a large tax bill because there was no way to get out of it
other than going through a no knock raid by the IRS for them to loot
whatever they wanted and claim it was to settle the bill. They had me
ranged and bracketed and my engine rooms were out of fuel. He knelt
willingly, I got knocked down.).

So let's hop the Church sets a precedent, not necessarily because we
agree with her stand on contraceptives, but because we truly despise
the Res Nostrae (government as Mob) taking our money, spending
it for things we object to, and then having the nerve to tell us how
to spend the rest.